A rationalist's view of climate change by Kirtland Griffin

I ran a post on this study concerning UHI in South Korea a couple of years ago, and thought it worth updating.

Quantitative estimates of warming by urbanization in South Korea over the past 55 years (1954–2008)

Kim and Kim

ABSTRACT

The quantitative values of the urban warming effect over city stations in the Korean peninsula were estimated by using the warming mode of Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of 55 years of temperature data, from 1954 to 2008. The estimated amount of urban warming was verified by applying the multiple linear regression equation with two independent variables: the rate of population growth and the total population.

Through the multiple linear regression equation, we obtained a significance level of 0.05% and a coefficient of determination of 0.60. This means that it is somewhat liable to the estimated effects of urbanization, in spite of the settings of…

Note that the temperatures were cooled from 1922 to 1965, effectively in the middle of the record, which started in 1882. As a result the overall trend since 1882 has remained virtually the same. But, of course, this is not the point, as it is the trend since the 1920’s that is significant.

We can see the effect on trends, using 5-year running averages in the chart below.

The UKMO issued their most recent 5-year global temperature forecast about a week ago. See their Decadal forecast press release for 2015. It has been getting a little press recently. The forecast description wasn’t as clear as it could have been, but the UKMO openly displayed the failure of the forecast from 2009 sea surface temperatures.

The media has been abuzz with claims that the January 2015 New England Blizzard was worsened by human-induced global warming. One of the outspoken activist members of the climate science community who has been quoted often on the storm is NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth. An example of Trenberth’s interviews can be found in the ClimateNexus post Blizzard of 2015: Normal Winter Weather, Amplified by Climate Change. The subtitle is actually quite funny, bringing back the old “consistent with climate models” nonsense: “Above average sea surface temperatures increase snowfall, consistent with model projections.”

Kevin Trenberth is reported to have claimed the following about the January 2015 New England blizzard:

The number 1 cause of this is that it is winter. In winter it is cold over the continent. But it is warm over the oceans and the contrast between the cold continent and the warm Gulf…

University of Toronto study finds atmosphere will adapt to hotter, wetter climate

TORONTO, ON – A study led by atmospheric physicists at the University of Toronto finds that global warming will not lead to an overall increasingly stormy atmosphere, a topic debated by scientists for decades. Instead, strong storms will become stronger while weak storms become weaker, and the cumulative result of the number of storms will remain unchanged.

“We know that with global warming we’ll get more evaporation of the oceans,” said Frederic Laliberte, a research associate at U of T’s physics department and lead author of a study published this week in Science. “But circulation in the atmosphere is like a heat engine that requires fuel to do work, just like any combustion engine or a convection engine.”

The atmosphere’s work as a heat engine occurs when an air mass near the surface takes up water through…

A study into why skeptics are not persuaded by the apocalyptic predictions of broken climate models has concluded that the solution is better communication.
According to the Toronto Star;

““When talking to skeptics it is probably important to focus on aspects that both skeptics and believers have in common rather than the differences between them,” said Ana-Maria Bliuc, a behavioural social scientist at Australia’s Monash University and one of the authors of the study.

As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said.

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.